Dr Mayerne and His Balsam of Bats.
Dr Mayerne, a learned English physician, who died, aged eighty-two, in 1655, showed by his prescriptions that his enlightenment was not more than that of the prevailing ignorance of the period. The chief ingredient in his gout-powder was "raspings of a human skull unburied;" "but," writes Mr Jeaffreson,[27] "his sweetest compound was his 'balsam of bats,' strongly recommended as an unguent for hypochondriacal persons, into which entered adders, bats, sucking whelps, earth-worms, hogs' grease, the marrow of a stag, and the thigh-bone of an ox."
No doubt the doctor imagined that a combination of the virulence, flightiness, swiftness, strength, and other qualities of all these animals would in some mysterious way be communicated to his melancholy patient; and, indeed, by acting on the imagination of such persons a favourable direction is given to their thoughts, and in this way their severe malady may at times have been removed.
HEDGEHOG.
This well-armed genus of insect-eating quadruped has sometimes given to describing zoologists, at least so it is said, an opportunity of paying a sly compliment, concealing an allusion to the touchy or supposed irritable disposition of the party after whom the species has been named. When Southey wrote the following paragraph, he happily expressed what is too commonly the meaning and wish of critics and criticised. If my readers look into any system of mammalia of recent date, under the article Erinaceus, he will see one or more instances of concealed allusions to touchiness of disposition in the persons of the naturalists, honoured by the seeming compliment. The hedgehog is itself a very useful and very harmless quadruped. It is of great use in a garden, and also in a kitchen frequented by crickets or black-beetles. Its food is chiefly grubs, insects, worms, and such like. The creature is easily tamed, and becomes a lovable and not a touchy pet. It is eminently nocturnal.